A Song For Friday: Scott Wollschleger

A great composer, brilliantly played. May these anthems never be lost. Also: Snõõper, Collin J. Rae, Mick Jenkins, Marcel Sletten, Kelly Moran, Thomas Kotcheff & Bryan Curt Kostors, and Seabuckthorn

In 2024, A Song For Friday featured Scott Wollschleger’s Between Breath, an album of chamber works I dubbed, “as rich and varied a collection as one could hope for.” In that piece, I gave a pocket account of my history with Wollschleger, going back to 2017, so I won’t recount the rewarding journey of discovery I’ve been on ever since. But I will say that even after all these years, he still manages to surprise me.

Lost Anthems is a 25-minute work commissioned by violist and composer Leilehua Lanzilotti for their 20/19 project that was originally subtitled “Songs intended to bring people together but after there are no people left to bring together.” While Wollschleger dropped the subtitle, it does reflect a spiky, bitter wit that the piece retains in parts. And even though it is a continuous piece, the 15 contrasting sections are brilliantly defined by Leilehua Lanzilotti and pianist David Kaplan’s fearless performance, which is captured in a dynamic and diamond-sharp recording.

Using a prepared piano and Leilehua Lanzilotti’s arsenal of extended techniques, Lost Anthems often takes an oblique approach to what we expect from these instruments. This is never more true than right at the beginning, with the viola’s dissonant drone supported by subterranean pulses from the piano. Soon, glassy high notes emerge from the strings, and the piano picks notes around them. That section is followed by a woozy figure from Leilehua Lanzilotti that soon grows strangled, with the piano hitting some brute chords in a square rhythm, as if trying to lasso a drunken moose. Giving up, the piano takes command with a pneumatic riff played at both ends of the keyboard, with the viola answering with a scrubbed note. That’s just the first five minutes! Listen to all of it and find your own anthems to sing within its multifarious movements.

Listen to most of the songs for Friday here or below.

Other Recent Releases

Snõõper - Worldwide The first thing you hear on the second full-length from Nashville’s pranky punksters is Brad Barteau’s drums laying down a furious pattern while somebody speaks in the background. Frantic as they are, the drums leave enough room for some steel-wool guitar chords to cut in as the song takes off. Possibly inspired by the hydraulic press videos on YouTube that have recently captivated band founders Blair Trammel and Connor Cummins, the sound is mechanical, but with a maniacal edge that is definitely driven by flesh and bone. Trammel speaks-spits some lyrics, a guitar (either Cummins or Connor Sullivan) sprays a solo like a dropped can of soda, Happy Haugen’s bass pulses and grinds, and by the time Opt Out is over, you will have opted IN. The energy never flags; in fact, things get even wilder, with some excellent whammy bar abuse in Company Car, police-siren whoops in the title track, and the least chill cover of Come Together ever conceived, to name just a few highlights. Snõõper could be the noise you need in 2025.

Collin J. Rae - The Last Noel and DYSTOPIK X-OTIKA By day, Rae is the head honcho of Sono Luminus, a label known for immaculate classical recordings, including most of the pathbreaking discography of Anna Thorvaldsdottir. By night - and these recordings were definitely made at night - he is a purveyor of a distinctive brand of earwax-dislodging cacophony that, when it matches your mood, matches it perfectly. At first pass, the tracks on these albums, despite such titles as Manger Danger and Toxic Ballet, may run together, almost like sides 1-4 of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, which is definitely in their DNA. But the more you listen, the more variation and nuance you hear. DYSTOPIC X-OTIKA is slightly less aggressive than The Last Noel, but they both take a wickedly gleeful approach to sonic abrasion.

Along the same lines, the very limited physical packages have to be seen to be believed. My copy of The Last Noel came with a small abstract painting, a pin, and a gothic cross suitable for hanging on my tree - complete with an ornament hook. DYSTOPIC X-OTIKA arrived with an original photo printed on wood, a pin saying “FUCK ART,” and two tiny animals. These may be 2025’s hottest musical gifts for those friends of yours who are completely jaded by the holidays. Or could that be you? Head to Rae’s stickingittou Instagram account for all the details - and for some pithy record reviews.

Mick Jenkins - A Murder Of Crows Working with Emil, a fine producer with a low-key style, Jenkins gifts us with some more “deep thoughts and humor,” as he did on 2023’s The Patience and 2018’s Pieces Of A Man. Here’s a gem from Dream Catchers, which starts the album off amidst a bed of lush piano chords: “Set fire to my spirit and dreams if it means that I sleep on myself/Catch me breathing that hardly/I’m thinking more Marley if we ever speaking on wealth/I’m thinking Chris Farley, we look at the world and get dumber and dumber, I seen it myself/By definition/These verses depositions, I subpoena myself/Hop the fence, the grass was greener, y’all lied.” You won’t have to dig hard to find more like that here.

Marcel Sletten - Chinatown Hennessy File this one under: Athens, GA is not just for college rock. On his sixth album, Sletten, a composer, keyboardist, producer, and head of the Primordial Void label, delivers an impressive array of moods and textures. From Oldsmobile Maximum, the immersive 19-minute opener, which pushes its warm ambient into distortion, like a hug that lasts a little too long, to the anthemic Mare, with its shimmering guitars, Sletten seems to have a drone’s-eye view of his overall project. He also has a way with words, starting with the album’s title. Baudelaire On Dilaudid is especially memorable, but I also like Southern Hardware and The Waterfront Look. More Eaze makes an appearance on Through The Noise, which approaches conventional song-form in a way familiar to fans of her work or that of Claire Rousay. And with the last track being called Annandale, I can at least include a mutual affection for Steely Dan in my budding parasocial relationship with Sletten. Seriously, though, this is quite a listen.

Kelly Moran - Don’t Trust Mirrors Despite the title, Moran and her prepared piano and electronics provide plenty of sparkle and reflection on this colorful and involving collection. The album is well-sequenced, too, from the refined uplift of Echo In The Field to the chillout of Cathedral. This is my favorite album of hers since the “sonic paintings” of Ultraviolet in 2018.

Thomas Kotcheff / Bryan Curt Kostors - Between Systems It’s hard to know what Morton Feldman and John Cage would have thought of what Kotcheff and Kostors have done with their music (note: I said “done with” not “done to,” LOL), but as an admirer of the first and a fan of the second, I am here for it all. With Kotcheff’s piano perfectly blended with Kostors’ richly imaginative and sometimes FUN electronics (modular synth, Take 5, Prophet Rev2, Hydrasynth, Sub37, DFAM, Subharmonicon, Lyra-8, and DrumBrute), the album completely recontextualizes Feldman’s Nature Pieces and Intermissions 3 and 5, and Cage’s In A Landscape and Dream. Some of this is more radical than others, as in Nature Pieces 2, 3, and 5, which add skittering rhythm patterns and bold synth sounds. In the hands of others, this could have been tacky, but Kotcheff and Kostors avoid any such pitfalls. While there is undeniable pop appeal to this addictive collection, there is no artistic compromise, a tough balance that these artists manage with aplomb.

Seabuckthorn - A Path Within A Path Andy Cartwright returns with a misty, hushed collection that finds him traveling even further from his signature bowed and electronically treated acoustic guitar. Working with a host of collaborators, each track is a textural exercise with a questing, emotional drive. One standout is Neither Trace Nor Ghost, which finds Cartwright using his voice to create a sonic bed for Clair Deak’s explorations on harp and bowed vibraphone. The subtlety and restraint throughout only make me listen more deeply to this gorgeous tapestry.